Last weekend I went with Mara to the Baltimore Theater Project to see the operetta "Cendrillon". This French version of Cinderella was written by female composer Pauline Viardot in 1904. The play lasted about an hour, and was presented in a lighthearted style with minimal set and dresssings. Three of my friends from college were involved as crew and cast.
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| Pauline Viardot |
Reading about Viardot on Wikipedia is incredibly fascinating. She was beautiful, she lived in Paris at the height of its fashion, she was wildly talented in the arts, she had famous and talented friends, and she lived a long life with a prolific career. I wonder if she was unusual for women of her culture and era, or if the life she lived was more common for European women than that of American women? She wrote 30 compositions, including vocal arrangements of works by Johannes Brahms, Franz Schubert, and Joseph Hadyn. Viardot wrote "Cendrillon" when she was 84 and it was her last work.
Opera is not really my thing, but the cast was entertaining enough to keep me engaged and clear enough in motivation to not lose any part of the story in the music. The actress playing
Cendrillon moved with delicacy but had a strong and lovely voice, and the actor playing the chamberlin Barigoule was hilarious! Their talent made me feel slightly daunted about the work I have to accomplish in voice training if I'm ever to perform music in theatre. Random note- the role of fairy godmother in this opera is for a coloratura soprano, which is a style of soprano that is within my voice range.
1 comment:
I loves me some opera! :-)
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